ion of his labour.

His own diffidence was not his only vexation. He that asks a
subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage
him, defame him. He that wants money will rather be thought angry than
poor; and he that wishes to save his money conceals his avarice by his
malice. Addison had hinted his suspicion that Pope was too much a tory;
and some of the tories suspected his principles, because he had
contributed to the Guardian, which was carried on by Steele.

To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more
dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his
qualifications for a translator of Homer. To these he made no publick
opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he
can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-five, with an
irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have
passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with
Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance; and what
man of learning would refuse to help him? Minute inquiries into the
force of words are less necessary in translating Homer than other poets,
because his positions are general, and his representations natural, with
very little dependence on local or temporary customs, or those
changeable scenes of artificial life, which, by mingling original with
accidental notions, and crowding the mind with images which time
effaces, produce ambiguity in diction, and obscurity in books. To this
open display of unadulterated nature it must be ascribed, that Homer has
fewer passages of doubtful meaning than any other poet either in the
learned or in modern languages. I have read of a man, who being, by his
ignorance of Greek, compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin
printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of
the lines literally rendered, he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric
majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions.

Those literal translations were always at hand, and from them he could
easily obtain his author's sense with sufficient certainty; and among
the readers of Homer the number is very small of those who find much in
the Greek more than in the Latin, except the musick of the numbers.

If more help was wanting, he had the poetical translation of Eobanus
Hessus, an unwearied writer of Latin verses; he had the French Homers of
la Valterie and Dac